Praying the psalms with St Benedict 5A: Three models for 'praying without ceasing'/1: The drousing virgins of Arles

When the twentieth century liturgists and historian Dom Adalbert de Vogue looked at the purpose of the monastic Office, he argued that its purpose was not, above all praise and adoration on behalf of all Christians, as I argued was the case in the previous post, but was rather, consistent with the monastic versus cathedral office distinction so beloved of the twentieth century liturgiologists, fundamentally about fostering personal prayer and meditation.  Above all, he and others argued, the monastic Office aimed to help the monk fulfill the injunction to 'pray without ceasing', above all through a constant recitation of the psalter.[1] 

Subsequent work has somewhat modified this picture: the hermits of Egypt who Cassian visited had a communal liturgy only on Sundays, and then consisting only of the hours of Vespers and Matins, with twelve psalms each.  While the monk may have said some form of Office each day, in the model that Cassian advocated, most prayer took a non-liturgical form, in the repetition of the psalter as the monk worked;  rumination on Scripture during the day; and the repetition of the invocation 'Deus in adjutorium meum intende...

Nonetheless, critiques by Dom Armand Veilleux (whose book on fourth century monastic liturgy effectively demolished the takes on Cassian and Pachomian practices promoted by Baumstark and his disciples) and others notwithstanding, the liturgists continue to insist that the monastic Office did not have an ecclesial dimension, but was directed purely at individual meditation. [2]  

The claim that St Benedict subscribed to a very literal interpretation of the injunction to pray without ceasing, and the total rejection of an ecclesial dimension to the monastic Office, has had, I think, dire consequences on twentieth and twenty-first century monasticism, so it is worth taking a much closer look at this issue.  My own view, as I hope to show as this series unfolds, is that this is really a case of 'both/and': both the monastic and non-monastic liturgies were, from the beginning intended to be both ecclesial and foster individual devotion.  

In this post I plan to provide something of an overview of the debate, and take a look at the Rule of Arles in this regard.  In the next two posts, I will look at Agaune and the Benedictine traditions respectively.

What does it mean to pray without ceasing?

There are several difficulties with the view that the Benedictine Office is directed at the aim of literally praying without ceasing, as many others have pointed out - not least that, in stark contrast to some of the other rules of the time such as that of Caesarius of Arles, the Benedictine Rule never actually quotes this Scriptural injunction.  Nor does it instruct monks to recite the psalms or pray while working, or provide for spiritual reading during manual labour (as Caesarius of Arles Rule does) for example. [3]

All the same, St Benedict does, as we shall see, allude to one of the related Scriptural formulas on continuous prayer, noted in the previous post, namely Psalm 1's description of the blessed man who meditates the law of the Lord day and night. And others have suggested that it is not so much that St Benedict did not implicitly have this injunction in mind, but rather that he interpreted it rather more symbolically (the seven repetitions of O God come to my aid, for example, meaning completeness) than literally for each individual monk or nun. [4]

In fact, I would suggest, though, that the most fundamental issue is just what the formula really means, and in the foundation documents of the  monasteries of St Benedict and his contemporaries, one can find, I think, at least three competing interpretations of what it means to pray without ceasing.

It is these different interpretations that I want to start teasing out over the next few posts, as one of the key forces that shaped the particular form of the Benedictine office, and differentiated it from others.

St John Cassian on praying without ceasing

Dom De Vogue's argument was basically that St Benedict instructed his monks to read the Institutes and Conferences of St John Cassian, and Cassian, in his conferences argued that the injunction (from 1 Thess 5:17) should be fulfilled literally.

It is true that Cassian urged the monk to learn as much Scripture by heart as possible, in order that it might constantly be turned over in his mind.  He also urged them to repeat the formula that opens the day hours of the Benedictine office ‘O God come to my aid, O Lord make haste to help me’, not just seven times a day, as St Benedict instructed, but continuously:

We must then ceaselessly and continuously pour forth the prayer of this verse, in adversity that we may be delivered, in prosperity that we may be preserved and not puffed up. Let the thought of this verse, I tell you, be conned over in your breast without ceasing. Whatever work you are doing, or office you are holding, or journey you are going, do not cease to chant this. When you are going to bed, or eating, and in the last necessities of nature, think on this. This thought in your heart maybe to you a saving formula, and not only keep you unharmed by all attacks of devils, but also purify you from all faults and earthly stains, and lead you to that invisible and celestial contemplation, and carry you on to that ineffable glow of prayer, of which so few have any experience. [5]

Memorization of Scripture, and most especially the psalms, certainly remained a key element of the monastic way of life for many centuries.

It is less obvious though, that St Benedict put quite the same emphasis on this, as opposed to active study of Scripture, as Cassian had though, in contrast to some of the other monasteries of his time. [6]

The nuns of Arles: waiting for the bridegroom

One of the key monasteries I mentioned in an earlier post was that of the nuns of Arles (founded circa 510), and it is worth starting with them on praying without ceasing, for its foundations documents are the only one of the three to explicitly refer to the injunction to Cassian's teaching on this subject, and to interpret it literally.

In chapter 21 of the Rule, Caesarius instructed the nuns to:

Set yourselves to praying without a break [sine intermissione], in accordance with that injunction of the Evangelist: pray all the time in order to be held worthy, and the apostle said: pray without ceasing. [7]

To understand where Caesarius was coming from on this, it is worth contrasting the opening paragraphs of St Benedict's and St Caesarius of Arles' Rules.  St Benedict famously opens his Rule with a call for the monk to enlist as a soldier of Christ, and to heed God's call for workers (for the vineyard). [8]

The Rule constructed for the nuns of Arles draws instead on another common monastic exemplar (employed in the monastic literature for both men and women), namely that of the wise virgins, waiting  with lamps burning and a good supply of oil, for the arrival of the bridegroom (Matthew 23). [9]

Bishop Caesarius explained the relevant of the image in the opening paragraphs of his Rule:

Because the Lord in his mercy has deigned to inspire and aid us to found a monastery for you, we have set down spiritual and holy counsels for you as to how you shall live in the monastery according to the prescriptions of the ancient Fathers.  That, with the help of God, you may be able to keep them as you abide unceasingly in your monastery cell, implore by assiduous prayer [assiduis orationibus] the visitation of the Son of God...Hence I ask you, consecrated virgins and souls dedicated to God, who, with your lamps burning, await with secure consciences the coming of the Lord, that, as you know I have labored in the constructing of a monastery for you, you beg by your holy prayers to have me made a companion of your journey; so that when you happily enter the kingdom with the holy and wise virgins, you may, by your suffrages, obtain for me that I may not remain outside with the foolish.… [10]

The good works of religious

One of the most common interpretations of the oil of the virgins was that it represented good works. [11]

But for Caesarius (in stark contrast to St Benedict's Rule), prayers and vigils - provided they were done for the right reasons - were the only good works religious needed to undertake.  In one of his sermons to monks, for example, he said:

you fulfill everything by your deeds…am I to give you advice to give generous alms when I know that out of love of Christ you have rejected all the wealth of the world, and when I see that you have given the Lord not only all your possessions but your very selves?...Do I dare to say that your holy selves should not be occupied with idle gossip, when I know that you are busy with reading and prayer, and that you meditate on the law of God by day and by night?  Only this one thing remains, then, dearest brethren, since the Lord has deigned to gather you and put you in a holy monastery as in a haven of rest and refreshment as if in some part of paradise.  By your continuous prayers may you strive to obtain for us that we who are ceaselessly tossed about by the waves of the world…[12]

The nuns had, moreover, a model to emulate in their founder-bishop, for the Vita commissioned by the sisters after Caesarius’ death claimed that:

He had him [God] in his heart not only in prayer and entreaty, but also at meals and on journeys, in conversation and in solitude, and in prosperity and adversity; even in his sleep he always had him with him.  Indeed, we ourselves and our fellow servants who stayed in his cell know what we are talking about.  Between interruptions in his sleep that his age not only required but also sometimes demanded because of sickness - his spirit being ever vigilant - he used to say, 'Come now, speak', as though he were advising someone to recite a psalm.  No one doubts that he used to sing psalms spiritually with the saints or that he certainly fulfilled that saying of the prophet, 'I sleep, and my heart remains on watch'.  [13]

The liturgy of Arles

The Arles liturgy was steeped in this theology.  

Seilac and McCrane have pointed out that one particularly notable feature of Caesarius’ discussion of the liturgy in the Rule for Nuns is that, although he drew on the (much earlier) Augustinian Rule's liturgical prescriptions when writing the text, he explicitly modified them so as to be more consistent with Cassian: where Augustine wrote 'be assiduous in prayer at the scheduled times and hours', Caesarius substituted "persevere in prayer without ceasing".  He also replaced Augustine's warning not to disturb those who wish to pray in the oratory with two scriptural invitations to pray without ceasing; and admonishes the nuns to always ruminate on something from Scripture. [14]

As the table below indicates, Caesarius required the nuns to nuns recite an enormous number of psalms each day. [15] They also read a large quantity of Scripture each week, both through formal lectio divina; Scriptural readings while they worked; and above all in the liturgy itself. [16] Each Saturday and Sunday night, for example, they said several ‘vigilia’, blocks of readings, prayers and psalms in addition to the core hours. [17]  And if they were struggling to stay awake, they were urged to stand up in order to fight off fatigue. [18]

Office design elements	Arles
‘Hours’	[7-9] Nocturns/Vigils, Lauds, Prime (S&S only), Terce, Sext, None, Lucernarium, Duodecima,
Estimated length of liturgy each day	12-16 hours per day
Extended/all night vigils	Yes – Fridays and Saturdays, feasts; some seasons
Psalter said over…	2-3 days, depending on season
Psalms per day	60-80+
Psalm order	Some fixed psalm for each hour; at Vigils, numerical order
Scriptural readings (other than psalms)	Scripture heavy - Readings at all of the hours except lucernarium + vigils of readings interspersed with prayers and psalms Sat&Sun plus winter.
Hymns, antiphons, prayers	yes
Explicitly intercessory elements	Capitella (psalm verse selections for particular intentions)

The Arles Rule was not though, the only Rule to attempt to legislate for perpetual prayer, and in the next post in this series I plan to look briefly at another regime that stood in contrast to St Benedict's, and that I think also helps to illuminate it, namely that of Agaune.

Notes

[1]  See Adalbert de Vogue, The Rule Of Saint Benedict: A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary (Cistercian Studies) (vol 1), 1983.  For a reassessment of the validity of the cathedral-monastic distinction see Stig Simeon R. Frøyshov, The Cathedral–Monastic Distinction Revisited
Part I: Was Egyptian Desert Liturgy a Pure Monastic Office?, Studia Liturgica 37 (2007), 198-216.

[2] Armand Veilleux, La Liturgie Dans Le Cenobitisme Pachomien Au Quatrieme Siecle,  (Strrdia Anselmiana 57); Herder, Rome 1968. For a more recent restatement of the liturgists position see Terrance G Kardong, Benedict's Rule Atranslation and Commentary, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1996,  See especially pp 209-217.

[3] Caesarius of Arles, Rule for Virgins, chapters 20-22.

[4] see in particular Fr Cassian Fulsom, Pray without ceasing.

[5]  C.S. Gibson, trans, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 11. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894, Conference 10, ch 10.

[6] Only the short, repeated readings of St Benedict's Office are done from memory for example, and the Matins readings are read from the book except for the short weekday readings of summer (see in particular RB 9: 5, 8 - Quibus dictis, dicto versu, benedicat abbas et, sedentibus omnibus in scamnis, legantur vicissim a fratribus in codice super analogium tres lectione...Codices autem legantur in vigiliis divinae auctoritatis...10:1 ...excepto quod lectiones in codice, propter brevitatem noctium, minime legantur, sed pro ipsis tribus lectionibus una de veteri testamento memoriter dicatur; RB 12, on Lauds, says: Inde benedictiones et laudes, lectionem de Apocalypsis una ex corde...).  The time between Matins and Lauds in winter is allocated to memorization of the psalms and lessons for those who needed it (RB 8: Quod vero restat post vigilias a fratribus qui psalterii vel lectionum aliquid indigent meditationi inserviatur.), but this is separate for the time generally allocated to lectio divina (set out RB 48).

St Benedict also explicitly provided for the reading of the commentaries on the books, which may have reflected a more intellectual approach to Scripture in Italy more generally: his contemporary Cassiodorus, for example, lists out the appropriate commentaries to use of the monks of his Vivarium in his Institutes.

By way of contrast, there is no reference at all in the Rule of Caesarius to the reading of the Fathers, and the nuns of Arles were required to do more substantial readings from Scripture at several of the hours.  The eighteen readings of their Friday night vigil from Easter to Pentecost were to be said from memory. (RC66)

[7] Rule for nuns of Caesarius of Arles, chapter 21.  The full Latin text of the Rule, along with a french translation can be found in A de Vogue and J Courneau (trans and ed), Caesarius D'Arles, Oeuvres Monastique, Sources Chretienne 345, Paris, 1988, vol 1, pp 190 ff.  An English translation can in theory (though the book is very rare) be found in Maria Caritas McCarthy, The Rule for Nuns of St. Caesarius of Arles, Volume 16 of Studies in mediaeval history: New series, Catholic University of America, 1960.

[8]  Prologue.3,14: Ad te ergo nunc mihi sermo dirigitur, quisquis abrenuntians propriis voluntatibus, Domino Christo vero regi militaturus, oboedientiae fortissima atque praeclara arma sumis...Et quaerens Dominus in multitudine populi cui haec clamat operarium suum, iterum dicit.

[9]  For earlier treatments of the wise virgins as a monastic exemplar for men, see for example Aphrahat Demonstration 6 (on monks): "Whosoever is invited to the Bridegroom, let him prepare himself. Whosoever has lighted his lamp, let him not suffer it to go out. Whosoever is expectant of the marriage-cry, let him take oil in his vessel; and Oresius in  Pachomian Koinonia 3, Instructions, Letters, and Other Writings Of Saint Pachomius And His DisciplesTranslated and annotated by Armand Veilleux OCSO.  The image was a staple for female monasticism, cited in numerous treatments of the subject.

[10] Ch 1, trans McCarthy, in La Corte, Daniel Marcel, and Douglas J. McMillan. Regular Life: Monastic, Canonical, and Mendicant Rules, Second Edition. Series: TEAMS Documents of Practice Series. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004, pp 58-9.

[11] Caesarius set this out himself in Sermon 156, which drew heavily on St Augustine's interpretation of the text: St Caesarius, Sermons, trans Mary Magdeleine Mueller, Fathers of the Church, 3 vols (31, 47, 66).  See also the discussion in Derek A. Olsen, Reading Matthew with Monks: Liturgical Interpretation in Anglo-Saxon England. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015, pp228-9.

[12] ibid, Sermon 234.

[13] Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, trans W Klingshirn, Liverpool University Press, 1994, Bk II ch 5.

[14]  Colleen Maura McGrane, The rule of virgins: the evolution of enclosure, ABR 59:4 - DEC. 2008, drawing on L. de Rodorel de Seilhac, L’Utilisation par S. Césaire d’Arles de la règle de S. Augustin. Étude de terminologie et de doctrine monastiques (Rome, 1974).

[15] The liturgical provisions of the Rule are contained in chapters 66-70.

[16]  All the hours have at least 2 or 3 readings except Lauds (which is followed by lectio for two hours) and Lucernarium (followed immediately by duodecima).  On reading while at work, see chapter 20.

[17] On the vigils, see RC chs 66, 68, 69.

[18] RC 15.